Come Out Tonight (22 page)

*
   
*
   
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I figured I’d take Thursday morning and go visit Vandenberg Institute on East 41
^st
.
 
I took the express train down to 42
^nd
, where I ran through tunnels and
  
down stairs, across landings in the giant rat’s nest of a subway under Time’s Square, headed for the shuttle to the
East Side
.
 
Half the city’s down there; you wouldn’t believe the riptide of people.
 
The current’s so strong, you don’t watch out, you can end up in
Coney Island
, where all you wanted was 59
^th
and Lex.

A hundred and fifty commuters were waiting for the shuttle by the time it rolled in, in its usual lackadaisical way.
 
A hundred and fifty New Yorkers pawing at the ground, stamping and snorting and ready to bolt onboard the moment the car opened its doors, on guard to jump into the first available seats.
  
Me, I don’t bother.
 
It’s only a short ride to Grand Central; and the sardine crush of people keeps you upright even if there’s nothing to hold onto.
 

The shuttle landed in Grand Central and, as usual, sat there futzing around on the track for five minutes. Doors still closed, grumbles and shrugs from the people inside who couldn’t get off, and the people outside who couldn’t get on.
  
So, what can you do?
  
Everybody waits.
 
To a tourist, it looks like patience, but that’s a laugh; there is no such thing as patience in
New York
.
 
All it is is hunkering down for the kill.

 
So, in a
New York
millisecond after the doors began to crack open, a hundred and fifty people, plus another fifty who had squeezed in at the last minute, exploded out.
 
All together, shoulder to shoulder, more and more feet in the crack of the door as it opened. Heave ho and push your neighbor.
 
Everybody out.
 
Now!
 
The crowd pushed me across the landing and up the stairs to Grand Central Station, through the station and out to the street.
 
I stood on the corner for a minute or two, catching my breath before I started my walk east to the Vandenberg Institute.

I didn’t know exactly what I was going for.
 
I guess I had this vague picture of me announcing who I was and being given the grand tour.
 
It didn’t work that way.
 
I went into the main lobby, and walked through this huge space with marble floors and marble columns, motion-detecting cameras on the walls whirring around, following anything that moved - straight up to an Armani-uniformed babe behind a marble desk.

“Yes?” she said, nose in the air.
 

“I’m here to see...” Here, I suddenly realized I didn’t know who I wanted to see. “...Uh, your research manager,” I finished.

“Which research manager?” the receptionist asked.

“Um, the brain research manager?”

The receptionist just sat there looking at me, like Hello? Don’t you know we have a million brain research managers here?

“Um, Ryan O’Donnell’s research manager?”

“Why?” she asked.
 
“Do you have a claim against Mr. O’Donnell?”

“A claim?” I asked.
  
That was something like a malpractice suit, I guessed.
 
“No.
 
Just some...information.”

“I see.
 
Well, just wait over there Mr....?

“Jackman.”

“Mr. Jackman.”
 
She pointed to a black leather and chrome grouping of couch and chairs.
 
Damn, this was lavish for a research-for-research’s sake facility.

I walked over and sat down and waited.
 
And waited.
 
Cameras whirred, tracking people coming in.
 
If they came in with a smart card around their necks, they could go on past; that is, as long as they lay their hands on a monitor that took an infrared picture of the whorls in their skin, measuring the chances out of a trillion of their not being who their card said they were.
  
If they came in, like me, Joe Schmoe who wants to see a research manager, no smart card around their necks, they could sit down for the rest of their natural lives.

So, there I sat for two hours, enough to memorize every detail in the place.
 
How the cameras could practically follow you around the room.
  
How the marble tiles making up the endless marble floor made perfect fractal patterns.
  
How several indistinguishable guys in brown suits and glasses never seemed to actually enter or leave.
 
They just hung around the space, melting into corners, hiding in plain sight, watching, always watching.
 
They gave me the creeps.

Every half hour I’d go back to the Miss Nose-in-the-air, telling her that I really do have some valuable information.
 
I would be happy to give it to anyone, really.
 
Yes, she said.
 
Just wait over there.
 
By 11:30, cameras whirred, following people with smart cards going the other way.
 
I figured I was seeing the lunch crowd.
 
I had about half an hour left.
 
If I didn’t grab onto someone, I might as well go to lunch myself.
 

Three people came by just then: two men and a woman.
 
I figured I’d try for the woman, hoping she was a soft touch, She was kind of pretty in a no-make-up, minimalist sort of way, but looked more hard edge than soft touch.
 
Maybe this was a bad idea, I thought just before I stepped in front of her.
 

“Yes?” she said, stopping short, the rest of the group stepping around me and continuing across the lobby.
 

“I was looking for...” And I still didn’t really know who I wanted to see.
 
“Sherry Pollack,” I blurted out.
 
The other two in the group stopped short in front of us and turned around.

“Sherry Pollack,” the woman said.
 
“Isn’t she...?

“She’s not here anymore,” one of the men called back.

“Really?” I said.
 
“Well, then.
 
Could I see her boss?”

“I think you should ask at the reception desk,” the woman answered.

“I did.
 
She keeps telling me to wait.”

“For whom?” the woman asked.

“That’s just it.
 
I don’t know.”

“C’mon Laura,” one of the men called.
 
“There aren’t going to be any tables left.”

“I’ve gotta go,” Laura said, walking away from me.
 
“Go ask the receptionist.”

So I went back for the umpteenth time to Miss Nose-in-the-air, and asked for Sherry Pollack.

“You are Mr....?

“Jackman,” I said.
 
“I told you seven times already.”

“Just a minute,” she said.
 
I couldn’t see what she was doing behind the desk.
 
For all I knew, she was pressing the emergency button, and armed guards would come out any minute, grab me under the arms and haul me away.
  
But she didn’t tell me to go back and just wait over there, so this was progress.
 
Three minutes later, a guy in a four-button suit came out and waved me inside with his smart card.
 
He put his hand on the monitor, then asked me to put mine on as well. It let me pass, all the while recording my hand for posterity.

Four-button escorted me down a hall and into an elevator, which wouldn’t go anywhere till he put in his smart card.
 
We went up thirty-five floors, and the doors opened into a semicircular space bounded by this big chrome and glass wall, the words “Vandenberg Institute” etched deep into glass.
 
Damn, this was lavish for a research-for-research’s sake facility.

Four-button led me behind the glass to a humongous door.
 
The door, hung with a heavy brass plaque inscribed with
James Q. Yielding, CEO
, whirred open to an expanse of windows, a long ebony desk with a large, tan-faced, dark-suited, white-haired man sitting in back.
  
“Sit down, Mr. Jackman,” he said, waving Four-button away, who genuflected out, the door whirring closed behind him.
 

“So you’re looking for Sherry Pollack?” he asked.

I nodded, my voice stuck in my throat.

“But Mr. Jackman, you must know that she’s no longer working here.”

I nodded again.

“I mean you must know because you’re her boyfriend.”

I bobbed my head a couple more times.

“You do speak, don’t you, Mr. Jackman?”

“Yes,” I squeaked.

“Okay.
 
My time is limited.
 
You say you have some valuable information for us?”

All this time I had been standing at attention.
 
Mr. Yielding nodded at the chair behind me, so I sat down, down, the chair so soft I sank into it.
 
Sunken, I could see the CEO way above me, seated like royalty.
 
All I could do was look up at him.

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing.
 
“It’s about Somnolux.”

“Ah, Somnolux,” he said.
 
“What about Somnolux?”

“Well, Sherry said...”

“Yes, how is Ms. Pollack these days?”

“Not so good.
 
She’s in a vegetative state.”

“Too bad.
 
She was a very bright woman.”

I didn’t want to get into Sherry right now.
 
That wasn’t what this was about.
 
Or was it?
  
“A while ago, Sherry told me about her theory of emergent mind....”

“Just a theory,” Mr. Yielding said.

 
“Well, she also said something about cases of people running amok.....”

He laughed out loud.
 
“Ridiculous.
 
Perhaps she was talking about the politician who had just come out of a drug treatment center.
 
It wasn’t the Somnolux he was taking.”

“Well, no, she was worried about more than one case....”

“Sleepwalkers, yes I know all about it.
 
But when you read the details, you find these people all had strong dispositions toward sleepwalking before they took Somnolux, or did not follow package directions.” He chuckled.
 
“Is that all the valuable information you have for me?”

“No,” I said, swallowing.
 
“There’s also one of your employees - Ryan O’Donnell.”

“Yes.
 
I’ve heard about him.
 
He discovered Somnolux along with Ms. Pollack.
 
Smart boy.
 
A real team player.”

“Well, did you know that he was trying to stop Sherry from speaking out?”

“Really? Speaking out about what?”

“About the side-effects.”

He made a dismissive sound.

“Yeah?” I said.
 
“Well, a couple of nights after they had an argument about it, Sherry was attacked.”

“And how would you know about this argument in the first place?”

“It was in my apartment.
 
I was there,” I said feeling more confident.
 
“I think someone tried to kill her so she couldn’t speak out.”

Another dismissive chuckle.
 
“And who would that be, Mr. Jackman?”

“Ryan,” I said.
 
“And now someone’s trying to pay him off.
 
Maybe so he wouldn’t tell who was really behind it.
 
He had a bag of cash in his apartment the other night.”

“Really?
 
Did he invite you into his apartment to show you this alleged bag of cash?”

“Well, no.
 
I kind of glimpsed it from through his doorway.”

“Glimpsed it?”
 
He laughed again.
 
“Are you sure it was a bag of cash, Mr. Jackman?
 
Maybe it was a bag of lettuce from the grocery?”

“I don’t think it was a bag of lettuce.”

“You don’t
think
it was a bag of lettuce,” he scoffed.
 
“And, for that matter, if it were a bag of cash, how could that possibly involve the Institute?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that, Mr. Yielding,” I said, standing up.
  

“Me?” he said, looking down from on high.
 
“I think you are running a little amok yourself, Mr. Jackman.
 
You come here insinuating that our employees knock off people they don’t agree with, and that we reward them for doing so.
 
No, I can’t tell you anything of the sort.”